Official group 2 scores!!!

Hello there group 2. These are official, congrats for making it this far and for those who make it past this, goodluck!

Scores!

(1)Rainbowgym vs (16)Kezzup

My challenge was Kingdra and I am using The LA kingdra who has an attack to shuffle water energy from the discard back into the deck but also an attack who deals 60 on the active and 20 on a bench pokemon while discarding 2 cards from your hand.

To use both attacks as good as you can, you need a way to keep on drawing cards AND a way to discard some more cards to use the first attack faster.

I found Empoleon from dark explorers with the diving draw ability a perfect partner for this Kingdra. Diving draw makes you discard a card from your hand to draw 2 cards from deck. Very handy when you shuffled back a lot of energy with Kingdra its first attack.
And Empoleon has a good attack also, for just 1 water energy 10 damage times the pokemon in play.

But that's 2 stage 2 pokemon and getting them out is the real challenge. Well in the older sets there are a few very handy cards which help you so much.
Pichu hgss can get you a bench full of basics. Oke your opponent can also full te bench, but Empoleon loves full benches.
To really build up those stages I have choosento use Spiritomb AR with the darkness grace attack it can get you an evolution from your deck and put it on the matching lower stage. Along with a nice stadium who allows you to evolve right away it should be not to hard to get all stages on the field.

Last the trainers, a mix of draw, search for pokemon and ways to get energy in the discard for Kingdra's first attack. Not to many item trainers because spiritomb blocks them when active.

Strategy:
Let's just go ahead and dive right into this strategy. Overall, this deck aims to hit hard, but most of all, fast. Whichever Kingdra is most convenient at the moment, you should be hitting for at least a consistent 60 damage per turn, enough to 3HKO pretty much anything in this broad format. So, let's take a look at the specifics.

The deck's starter is Sableye, simply due to how incredibly powerful he is overall. Not only is it an automatic win at the coin flip, it gives me unlimited access to ANY Supporter first turn, which helps set-up a lot.

There were many Horsea to choose from in this deck, but I went with the one from Legends Awakened. All of the Horseas had similar stats, so it came down to which attacks would give the biggest advantage. This Horsea's first attack, which can prevent an opponent from attacking it with a coin flip, is porbably the best one to have in a pinch and could prevent some unfortunate donks with a bit of luck.

Seadra is in a similar situation - lots of choices, most of them pretty similar. In terms of attacks, though, the Legends Awakened one blew the rest out of the water (pun intended). Aqua Pump, for one Water Energy, can discard Water Energies from the hand AND do more damage for having done so. This is a great help to one possible route my strategy could take, which I'll get to discussing...

... right now. I've split the line at the end to give the deck a chance to use two Stage 2s, the first one being regular Kingdra from Legends Awakened. This card saw a lot of play back when it was legal, and there are many reasons for that. It has reasonable HP for a Stage 2 and a decent retreat, but what really makes it stand out are its attacks. The one you'll be using most is Dragon Pump, which does 40 damage, or 60+20 snipe if you discard 2 cards. Discarding usually won't be too much of a problem, especially because besides making Kingdra's attack more usable, it creates a combo with his FIRST attack, Aqua Stream. Aqua Stream allows you to shuffle as many Water Energies back into your deck as you'd like and does 10 damage time the number you shuffled back in. Combined with Dragon Pump, Seadra's Aqua Pump, and many other cards in the deck, this attack is a great late game sweeper, with the potential to do 90 damage - for no energy! It can also work for edging in a little more damage to get a KO should you be lacking the energy.

The other Kingdra ready for use is Kingdra Prime. Statwise, he's the same as Kingdra, and he even has the same 60-for-1 attack, just without the discard (and barring any Fire types in play). A big draw for him, though, his his Poke-Power, which allows the placement of 1 damage counter on the opponent per turn. Kingdra basically acts as an every-turn PlusPower, and if you have the good grace of getting two out, you're adding 20 damage to your attacks every turn.

Next up is the draw power... well, after this, because we have to go through Skitty to get to it. There were a LOT of Skittys to go through (even more than Horseas), and it really came down to two factors when choosing the one from Platinum. First was the HP - a lot of the Skitty cards have 50 HP, so this one having 60 could end up saving it in some situations. The second reason is its first attack, which heals 10 damage off of all of my Pokemon for no energy. While not the most useful attack in the world, it could provide some useful support in a pinch and, hey, is better than nothing.

Now onto the whole reason to use a Skitty in the first place - Delcatty. Delcatty is a bench-sitter, used entirely for its Poke-Power - discard an energy and draw 3 cards. Not only does this help fuel Kingdra's Aqua Stream, it also provides a MASSIVE boost to draw - combining it with a Supporter could yield 6+ cards in one turn.

Finally for the Pokemon, there's Unown G, who is a great help as a tool. Once again popular in its given format, it can attach itself as a tool and prevent side effects of any attacks dealt to the Pokemon its attached to. This prevents decks that use extra shenanigans to try and knock things out, like special conditions. Kezzup - 8/10 3/5 4/5= 15/20

The strategy of the deck is to use Gengar's 1 energy cost attack to put the opponent's Pokemon at 10HP which then will be knocked out by Poison after you play Hypnotoxic Laser. If you wanna know the attack I'm talking about, here it is off Gengar.

Life Drain
Flip a coin. If heads, put damage counters on the Defending Pokémon until it is 10 HP away from being Knocked Out.

strat: Beat down hard, and early with charizards 1 fire energy attack hopefully for 80.

How to set up: pichu t1 if possible for a bench of 2 slugma, 2 vulpix, 1 charmander. Then next turn evolve into macargo/ninetales combo to grab any card u need to put it on top of your and ninetales lets you draw that card. This allows me to play single copy of cards.

Pichu: i need a full bench asap even if its not a fire pkm i can either get the bait kill, or let it as my active guy while powering up a big charizard on the bench

Ninetales/Macargo: the engine of letting me get anything from my deck

Charizard: Beat down everything

Max potion: heal my damaged charizards and do more beat down

Junk arm: allows me to grab back my 1 copycards or max potion

Memory berry: i run charmelon with rage so in case my charizard has alot of damage on it i can grab a surpise k.o with rage

level ball: no need to grab charizards eary just get macargo/ninetales and from that i can grab any evoloutions that i need, both my engines have 90 and less hp

Bts: drop my charizard line down after my active one has been murdered

draw supporters: cheren- need to draw cards due to magcargo, steven advice is better but sometimes my hand is too biug for me to use it

Charizard EX is your main attacker, and the goal of this deck is to set up a consistent stream of Charizards to attack for 200 damage, using Boost Energy to more quickly reach 200. Eeletrik runs an engine very similar to the Zekeels system. This deck attempts to improve all of the aspects of Charizard's discarding attack, helpful Poke-body, and slight fragility. The ideal set up of this deck has Jirachi starting so that you can re-use your supporters, and Jirachi is also moderately bulky and can take some damage. Your opponent will hesitate to KO it as well because of its Poke Power. Jirachi is partnered well with Night Teleporter, because it can search for a card like Cynthia's Feelings after a KO and use it twice if needed. Jirachi's free retreat is good because whenever a Pokemon is KO'd, Jirachi can move up and be sort of like a "free retreater" so I can switch into whatever I need.

Charizard is incredible because its second attack destroys almost every Pokemon. It ignores effects on the Defending Pokemon and can rip any deck to shreds.

To properly complement Charizard, I thought it was important to use Boost Energy with Energy Charge. In this method, I can Boost Charizard and add on another energy or two with Eels. The Boost counts as Fire and will be discarded anyway, so it's no huge loss. Additionally, Energy Charge lets me get Special Energy back from the discard, and coin flip losses can be mitigated by Junk Arm. Boost is also safe from Lost Remover.

Eels also help Charizard because Charizard discards energy... So, what better method than to put them on again?
I used Cynthia's Feelings because it has a good combination with Jirachi- a pokemon is KO'd, so I can Night Teleport for Cynthia and use it once, play out as much of my hand as possible and Cynthia again. Twins also work with this deck because of the prize loss that occurs with EX, so the Jirachi combo works well with searching out 4 cards.

N is useful in the early game and can be disruptive. I picked Windstorm over Tool Scrapper because it has more versatility. BTS is helpful to quickly evolve Eels and Charizard. Switch is good to counter status conditions as I can switch into Jirachi. This is especially good against PHB.

Ultra Ball and Junk Arm feed the Eel engine and Skyla is helpful to net good trainer cards. Super Rod can get back pokemon that I may have discarded.

I picked Computer Search over all of the Ace Specs because it best provides search ability for me while feeding the Eels.

The downsides of Charizard ex, his double weaknesses and EX status, are managed by cards that take advantage of prize loss and KOs on my own field and a highly fluid discard system that gives me a quick advantage in almost any situation. I don't use any other cards weak to Water and Lightning and Charizard's speed is enough, and has enough consistency, to prevent my opponent from building any Pokemon quickly enough to get rapid OHKO. This deck pushes past its weaknesses with raw power and doesn't try anything fancy. A nearly-guaranteed KO is pretty much as simple as it getspnoodle5 - Illegal Charizard EX, DQ

Strategy in general is to use Gardy Lv. X's Bring Down. Dusknoir's ability is used to help ensure Bring Down is hitting them, not me. Dusknoir Lv. X adds to the strategy by further pressing the spread.

Gardy SW is just generally good, using opponent's discarded supporters is amazing. Psychic Lock can be used to help keep any Powers under control.

Gardy NXD is used to help keep attack costs extra easy. Bring Down for one attachment? Yes please.

Kirlia/Ralts SW were the best based on weakness and HP. Same logic on Duskull and Dusclops.

Spiritomb is the evolution aficionado, also keeping the pace of the game under control while I setup.

Unown Q is used to help not waste that attachment on Spiritomb and to have a free retreat option at the ready.

Azelf is the default "bail me out of prizing my Pokemon line" utility.

Collector is the ideal T1 Supporter to get the needed basics out. Thankfully, since all of my basics are 1 Retreat or better, a T1 Darkness Grace isn't all that out of the question.

PONT is good for all around hand refresh for when a utility supporter just isn't going to cut it.

3 Candy/2 BTS: Because of the Candy errata, I chose to run more S1's then I would've and simply used BTS to counter the drop in Candies.

2 Communication/2 Bebe's are to keep a good balance in Supporter vs Item search, keeping Darkness Grace in mind.

2 Night Maintenance is to keep the supply of Dusknoir and Gardevoir (Lv.X) in play.

2 N: Used to lock an opponent out at the end and as shuffle draw at the beginning.

2 Wally's Training are used for evolution under Item lock.

1 Warp Point is for awkward situations with actives and for increased odds of T1 Darkness Grace.

Strategy: Use Celebi to power up Crobat EX and hit hard with it via hypnotoxic laser/other crobat and virbank. Celebi fit the bill as I wanted to hit hard and have some sort of energy acceleration for this Crobat. Claydol was the obvious inclusion (and probably going to kill my creativity score) as it does an amazing job with consistency. Between Virbank, Hypnotoxic laser, Crobat EX's power and attack, he is a force to be reckoned with. Time for Pain - 9/10 3/5 4/5= 16/20

60
Vileplume to prevent Switch or Escape Rope, Virbank City to enhance poison. Poison will now do 60 per turn and Crobat has free retreat. A Spritomb start lets you evolve quickly using Darkness Grace and you can start poisoning under trainer lock from T3.BeedrillBoy - 8/10 3/5 4/5= 15/20

Pokemon
Kabutops Power Keepers. The little base set aerodactyl that couldn’t… at least, back in his own format. With the entire modern DP, HS, and BW sets available to him, he finds a very mean partner in vileplume UD. The deck itself is set up similar to vilegar back of MD-UD fame, except with a few extra nasty tricks up my sleeve.

The Pokémon for my main line were chosen carefully. The kabuto from MD was used because it can play dome fossil to the bench, even under trainer lock. Using dome fossil instead of mysterious fossil (yes both are valid choices per TCPI) means I can easily get kabuto going turn one; it just takes a single energy attachment. The kabutops itself is fairly neat. Under the lock he provides, paired with trainer lock from vileplume, if I go first, or my opponent misses the turn two evolve, they lose. Even if they get it, once I take the first one down, the rest follow. Note that unlike archeops, his body only applies to my opponent. I can evolve all I want to! Also note I only play 3 fossils. See the stadium section for why.

As far as vileplume goes, the oddish chosen was done because of the weakness. Gloom was chosen for the (free) attack that can heal 20 damage, even at the cost of sending itself for sleep.

Spiritomb AR is our natural choice of starter here. Starting the trainer lock from turn one is killer good in a format with nothing but broken trainers everywhere. No worrying about a certain flippy beam of doom, pokedrawer engines, etc is great.

For draw power, we have everyone’s favorite mainstay; Claydoll. This guy is a beast. With almost no worries of him getting dragged active (vileplume and a banlist banning catcher/luxray gl) or sniped (raikou EX is banned) a 2-2 line is sufficient. The baltoy from DRX is used for the second attack, which can serve as a “mini judge” if needed. You never know when an effect like that might come in handy.

A 1-1 Ninetales line brings up the rear. In this format, it’s the only real way to drag something active without an attack’s effect. (Or the flippy Pokémon reversal) The vulpix secret rare is used because discarding energy to draw is always awesome. Ninetales, naturally, is good for attacking too. Remember that grass types are super effective against kabutops, so ninetales can take out those pesky grass types that might have gotten teched in. 40 after weakness can kill things like oddish in a trainer lock mirror. Don’t ever underestimate 40 damage in the right place. Even 20 can grab something that has run away.

Trainer-Items
You’ll note very few trainer items. Vileplume makes them fairly useless. All you’ll see here is Rare Candy, to accelerate evolution, and Dome Fossil, which Kabuto can play to the bench directly anyways.

Trainer-Supporters
Twins is awesome when your opponent will likely draw a cheap prize off of spiritomb as you set up. Giving you your entire setup is worth that prize, no doubt. It is well worth three slots. It can always be gotten rid of via claydoll if it’s useless.

Celio’s network grabs you whatever pokemon you need at the moment. While it sounds weak, it’s vastly superior to Bebe’s Search, which was a instant 4-of in vilegar.

Mr. Briney’s Compassion is SSU on steroids. With BTS in play (if the opponent plays it), it’s like a max potion for one of your pokemon. You can use it to scoop up whatever you like. It also allows re-use of ninetales DRX’s bright look. Even without BTS, though, it’s a very important card. Scooping up the active can save you games out of the blue.

PONT is your standard draw power. It assists greatly in hand refreshment before we get our claydoll engine set up. It’s really never a bad card to have.

Pokémon Collector is our go-to for getting out our baltoys, oddishes, and spiritombs. With most catcher-like effects banned, we don’t need to play too many extras to the bench. It also works even after trainer lock goes up, so that’s always good.

Palmer’s Contribution is our recovery method. While technically Flower Shop Lady does more recovery, Palmers allows us to choose Pokémon OR energy. That way, if we don’t want to pitch useless cards into the deck, we don’t have to. The key phrase in this card’s text is “Up to” a phrase that flower shop lacks.

Trainer-Stadiums

Strange Cave is like what Twist Mountian wishes it could be. With it in play, I can play kabuto directly to my bench, no fuss. This is invaluable in a trainer lock scenario.

Energy

Fighting energy is our basic energy of choice. We only need to play a few of them, because thanks to vileplume, we don’t really need to worry about our special energy being hammered away. Note that vulpix says energy, not basic energy. There’s really no concern to playing lots of special energy except scizor. And once the first one goes down, no more can evolve up.

Multi Energy is played purely to allow Ninetales and Vileplume to attack if need be. Sometimes, having a fire or grass type attack is worth it. Once again, no worries of hammers, so no worries of the energy going bye bye.

Scramble energy, like twins, is a great way to get an attack off the second spiritomb goes down. 3 of any energy type means EVERY SINGLE ATTACK on any of our evolved pokemon is available for one energy card. That’s beyond broken.

Warp energy is our escape card. Ninetales isn’t banned, so we need a way to retreat under trainer lock. Also, status conditions such as poison can be nasty. Lastly, it enables us to get spiritomb active turn one. Since his attack does not require an energy, warp energy assures a Darkness Grace so long as spiritomb is on the field. Also of note, it allows us to switch between two kabutops when one is damaged if we don’t have Briney in hand. Cabd - 10/10 3/5 4/5 = 17/20

flygon BC
this card is the beast with it sand slammer ability which is my base for this deck.
Vibrava BC
It sand pulse and a very good attack to spread the damage
trapinch sw
is the cather of this deck to stall early game so u can setup
Dusknoir lvx stormfront
if they decide to ko the beast is poke power will make do 10 damage inbetween turns.
Dusknoir BC
moves damage to setup taking lots of prize at once
Dusclops dp 47
if force to attack with it u can do 20 to all ur oppents pokemon on a coin flip.
Duskull sw
it can be evolve right of the bat because of the reaper cloth
pichu hgss
let u setup ur bench and when ko let u use twins nto help u get going even more.Redwater - 8/10 4/5 3/5 = 15/20

The strategy is simple. You have Holon Cast from or Pachirisu for starters.
You discard energy with your supporters, by retreating or when your basics might get KOed.
Flygon can then come out of nowhere and hit for a decent amouth of damage. At the time were it could be played 100
was quite high.
Magcargo and Nidoqueen is the support that gets this deck running. Nidoqueen also works as your non ex attacker.
Many things in the deck has more than one function, given this deck so many ways to play it. However it all comes
down to Flygons power which is the key driver of the deck.

I was so happy to get Flygon and I knew it had to be build around Flygon ex LM. I played a similar deck at Worlds 2007 and came top 16 with it. It placed 2nd that year also by Steffen F. It was the best deck I ever played!

I put some comments on the list below in a somewhat random order. I just added the comments as I thought of them while creating the deck.

No Holon Mentor Yep it was on the ban list. So the best basic finder left was Pokémon Collector, I believe.
Its really a shame since this was the final piece to make the deck really complete.

Discard cards like Professor Juniper would be to much in here. You will just end up discarding something you really need.

Why not DCE? In this case the two attackers of the deck both need 3 colorless nrg for there attacks. Boost provides this.
It also gives a major advantage in that you can take up 2 boost energies on Flygon power and then attach a Holon Cast form from your
hand, thereby getting one of the boost energies back in your hand. In this way you can attack with Flygon for two turns easily and even be ready to use Nidoqueen
if you have to.

Giant stump is an amazing way of getting rid of damaged Pokémon from your bench or for any other reason to decrease your or your opponents bench.
If you started with a Castform or a Pachirisu and your opponent for some reason did not KO it. You can remove them with Giant stump, thereby also increasing the strengh of Nidoqueens
attack. Its a better thing than max potion.
Scramble Switch also works well with Giant stump, since after playing your Cramble Switch you can get rig of your damaged Pokémon on the bench.
You can even you it to get your Pachirisu or Holon Castform up front in the first turn. It has many functions in this deck.
I did not pick Computer Search since this deck already has a high level of consistency. You instead have room to improve other aspects of the deck, which the Scramble Switch does.

Broken Time Space gives this deck a lot of speed and it was simply a must in the deck.

This might have a lot of single cards, but this does'nt matter thanks to Magcargo. You use your Tranciever, Smooth over and play your draw supporter.
Remember that Holon Tranciever also can take supporter from your discard pile.

I play with the delta version, so I can utilize Castform if I happen to start with it. Also it work well with Indiana Jones.
Also the Holon engine was by far the best engine ever in the game IMO. You could use it in so many decks. It did'nt even have to be a delta deck for the engine to work really well.

I added 1 other Vibrava (Energy Typhoon) since it has such an amazing attack. Against many types of deck this can do MASSIVE damage.

Holon Castform is so amazing. I use it instead of Holon Electrode/Magneton, since I can use it as my starter.
With this deck it is so good just to draw those few cards in the beginning, cause that all what it needs to get running.

1 Switch and 1 Warp point. Back in the days this was a nice split. You could always get the one you wanted thanks to Magcargo.
This along with Scramble Switch gives you 3 cards you can Switch with, which is plenty.

The Hypnotoxic Lasers were added since many times you need these 10-20 more damage when playing this deck. Having a damage output of 100 on avaerage you often need just a little more.
Of course you also have the possibility to attack with the first attack and thereby give more than 100 damage. Also having a chance to make your opponent asleep is great!
It is an upgraded Plus power. SuperE - 9/10 3/5 4/5 = 16/20

Strategy:
The most important strategy of this deck is the engine. Lunatone can discard a card from your hand once during your turn and when you have Solrock in play you can draw a card! This combos very good with Magcargo, which puts any card on top of your deck. The Solrock even has a little bonus as well, if you have Lunatone in play you can arrange the top3 cards of your deck in any way you want. It gives you the perfect topdeck for next turn or a good card for the turn you’re playing. To make this engine complete there is Poké Drawer + in this deck, it can get the top card as well and if you happen to get 2 of them (with the Magcargo/Lunatone combo) you can get any 2 cards from your deck! It’s even possible to get the Magcargo combo running T1 because of Broken Time-space! Not to mention that you can use multiple Magcargo Power and multiple Lunatone power in 1 turn!
For the little basic Pokémon I just chose the best options, I chose this Slugma over the one that draws a card because it can lock your opponent’s active Pokémon in front.
Then for Ampharos, there are many good Ampharos cards in this format, at first I wanted to play Ampharos prime with Dusknoir but it takes so many spaces in the deck to get it on the field and it’s quite slow. I was looking for a more aggressive variant, so I chose to use Ampharos from HGSS, it’s first attack does 30 and searches your deck for 2 basic energies which you can attack to 1 of your Pokémon. With Expert Belt attached, it does 50 damage for 1 energy. The second attack isn’t bad as well, 80 for LCC (there is a chance you’ll hurt yourself as well but that’s not a big issue) and 100 if Expert Belt is attached. But you’ll only use the 2nd attack if you have to go really aggressive, it really depends on the situation. Normally you’ll use the first attack to get all of your basic energies into play and then come up with Lanturn Prime. It’s not that hard to get 7 Lightning and a few DCE/Scramble into play. For example if you have 7 Lightning and 2 DCE in play, Lanturn does 40 + 110=150 damage. And it can be more, which is really good because it’s easy to accomplish. The great thing on Lanturn is that it can change type as well so you have multi type attackers. Solrock can be an attacker as well, it does 60 if you have a Lunatone in your discard pile (and you have to shuffle it back), so 80 with Expert Belt, and only for 2 colorless energies! Lunatone’s attack can be usefull when your opponent has an annoying stadium and even Magcargo can attack (with scramble) but you’ll mainly attack with Ampharos, Lanturn and sometimes with Solrock.
Lanturn needs 3 energies so it takes a turn to make it ready for attack, unless you use scramble switch! With broken time-space you’ll have Lanturn up in 1 turn, scramble switch and attack!
4 Level Ball are necessary because you have many Pokémon with less than 90 HP. 2 Ultra ball should be sufficient because you have an awesome engine. Same goes for the only 7 supporters, seems not that much but your engine compensates it. The supporters that I use in here are used to draw a quite large amount of cards when you need to (you can put a supporter on top and draw it with Lunatone). I chose for Cynthia because you can get it out of your deck after 1 of your Pokémon is KO’d. Oak’s because it’s a solid card. Juniper is tricky but I only use 2 and you can get them with the engine at the right moments.
I chose not to use Skyla because the engine can easily do without.
I use 1 warp point because it’s a really good, game winning card. And I guess super rod doesn’t need an explanation.
The energy line has 4 DCE because it powers Lanturn a lot and makes the 2nd attack of Ampharos possible. The lightning are obvious but maybe the scramble are not. This deck is aggressive so why scramble? Well you might wanna go for the strategy of just charging your field, in that case you’ll probably get behind in prizes and then scrable can charge a lanturn in 1 turn and add more damage to Lanturn’s attack!Matijs - 9/10 4/5 4/5 = 17/20

Get Ampharos out turn 2 at latest with a technical machine TS 2.
Ampharos should put damage on Pokemon that get energy.
If these Pokemon try to evolve use technical machine TS 2 to level them down back to low HP basics but if too many Pokemon are evolving use omastar to put them back down. Use max potion and Holon circle to keep Ampharos out.
If siting around is not your style attach a double rainbow energy and a water energy to start attacking with Ampharos. Protect omastars using bench shield. If you need some cards use skyla, juniper,oak,store girl, scott, and computer search to get the cards you need. Technical machine TS 1 can get the Pokemon you need to win and power down the opponent.Normal Guy - 7/10 5/5 4/5 = 16/20